October 28, 2010 · 9:00 am

Finding Antarctica

My 10-year high school reunion is coming up next year. I had a dream the other night about attending it.  We had all gathered in our old high school/junior high (our district was so small that grades 7-12 were taught in different wings of the same building) and, to celebrate 10 years out of school, were cleaning the place top to bottom. My old classmates were laughing and joking around about their school days. I washed the counters with a quiet smile not sure what to say.

I spent seven years on a visitors pass, so to speak, in that school district.  Like an Emperor Penguin living in a savannah I plopped down into their world at the beginning of the sixth grade.  The first year or two I actively didn’t belong. After that the teasing subsided and I was simply left alone, a quiet, slightly befuddled penguin diving for fish in the dry grass. In my last couple of years at that school I counted down the years, months, weeks, days until graduation. I couldn’t wait to disengage and never look back. It wasn’t a bad place; there were no bad people. It was simply a poor fit for who I was then.

Even as a deep introvert there have been people with whom I clicked into place the first time we met. If one listens there is almost an audible pop as a burgeoning friendship snaps together. This didn’t happen there. I stumbled across some friends, yes, one or two of which I’ve even recently started to chat with once again. It never made me any less penguin, though.

To re-interpret one of my favourite quotes*: as deep a cavern as loneliness carved within me during those years, this is my capacity for happiness and belonging now. As hard it as it was to be a visitor for so long I wouldn’t change my experiences there for anything. The person I was then is not who I am today in a myriad of (good) ways. I’ve found and am finding Antartica.

Before the dream I was feeling vaguely guilty for not wanting to re-connect at the reunion. I want to want to catch up with everyone. Reunions seem like the sort of thing that one just does, like sending thank-you notes, giving up a seat on the bus to someone who needs it more, or believing that a niece or nephew is the smartest, kindest, and funniest child in North America. 😉

The desire to do so is nowhere to be found, though. Not to sound callous, but if I couldn’t bond with my 80-ish classmates over the seven years we went to school together I doubt it will ever happen and would much rather spend my vacation time (and airfare/hotel money) with and on friends and family.

Why, then, do I still feel a tinge of guilt over this decision? If you’ve ever had similar emotions about something you really did not want to do, please share!

*The actual quote:

As deep a cavern as sorrow has carved within you, this will be your capacity for joy. P. L. Reilly

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October 25, 2010 · 9:00 am

You Are Your Sense of Humour

Most of the posts here so far have been rather serious. This blog is a reflection of my personality in that I definitely tend to err on the serious, contemplative side of life.  Today I’m going to share some of the things that make me laugh and talk a little about why each one appeals to me.

Here is my theory about humour: knowing what makes someone laugh is a fantastic gauge of their personalities, values and beliefs. Once you’ve figured out a few things about me from this post, share your favourite jokes, comics, links to videos or other material in the comment section. I look forward to checking them out!

*Or, conversely, knowing what they find offensive, off-putting or even just not funny!

I love puns almost as much I do reading and writing and the latter are among my favourite activities of all time!

Authoritarian

Jungian type prayers I am such an INTP!

My Little Golden Book About Zogg. As a child I adored the Little Golden Book series. Some of the pictures in the books were a little odd, though, which one reason why I find this parody so entertaining.

Unauthorized Trader Joe’s Commercial. Fun fact: I’ve never actually visited Trader Joe’s! This video does remind me of the local health food store, though, which carries a similar array of unconventional products.

Donald Duck Meets Glenn Beck in Right Wing Radio Duck. This is the most clever mashup I’ve seen in quite a while. Donald Duck was the perfect cartoon character to be shown reacting to some of  Glenn Beck’s most fear-inducing ideas. It would be even funnier to remix this clip for, say, the people I discussed a few weeks ago on Suggestion Saturday who don’t believe in germ theory.

Poly Interview. There are times when I am sorely tempted to make up ridiculous stories when people ask me the same questions again and again about what it is like to be agnostic, childless by choice, or bi. If only there was some sort of official FAQfor these things! 😉

Fumbling Toward Ecstasy. I’ve mentioned the Vag magazine series before here. This is their debut episode and is a great example of how to maintain a sense of humour and playfulness about one’s beliefs, whatever they may be!

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October 23, 2010 · 9:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: October 23, 2010

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, charts, videos and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Why I Don’t Care About Success. I love this post. It is one of the ideas that I had in mind when I first started On the Other Hand: that the traditional definition of success doesn’t work for everyone and that living the good life isn’t a formula, it’s doing whatever it is that works for you and your life.

The Danger of a Single Story. Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s discusses the dangers in only knowing one story about another culture.

The Ant, The Grasshopper, and a Steaming Pile of Manure. Speaking of stories, here are a few politicized re-tellings of the classic fable about the ant and the grasshopper. It really goes to show just how easy it is to co-opt a traditional story to fit almost any purpose.

The Physics of Immortality and Physically Impossible?. These two posts have provoked a fascinating discussion about physics and immortality in their comment sections. I hope to see some of you join the conversation over there!

Supernatural Collective Nouns. I wanted to end Suggestion Saturday on a lighthearted note this week. Have you ever wondered how to refer to several cyborgs, elves, mad scientists, or chupacabra? Click on the link to find out! My only criticism of this list is that it didn’t include a collective noun for slayers.

What have you been reading?

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October 21, 2010 · 9:00 am

The Grammar of Purple People

We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them. –Charles Caleb Colton

When we envision a person we generally assume that, of course, the individual in question is:

And probably a few other things that I haven’t thought of, too. For the purpose of this post, I’m going to define purple people as those of us who don’t fit one or more of these assumptions.

Much of my identity is somewhat to fairly easy to puzzle out for anyone who reads this blog regularly.  I’ve talked about the ways in which I differ in the past and will bring them up again in future posts.

For the Record

I am deeply unashamed of who I am as a human being. I also highly value privacy, though, and the idea that not everyone we meet needs to know everything about us right away (or even at all.) Knowing someone’s name, befriending them, even sharing the same ancestors, workplace, religious or political beliefs, hobbies, or hometown doesn’t give anyone the right to unfettered access to the life of anyone else. If we want to share – and  doing so is often a very good thing – we will share!

Query

What responsibilities do those of us who live outside of the box have for thePeople That Don’t Get It(tm)?

Unfortunately too often we see labels, not people. That it is common doesn’t make it less dehumanizing. No one is just any one aspect of their lives so my modus operandi about certain things is to give people a chance to know Lydia-the-person before they learn about the labels and the nouns and verbs behind them that describe me. Sometimes labels stick anyway and the person I am still ends up hidden behind  the grammar of being whatever this new friend thinks I ought to represent after all. If they know me as a person first, though, they’re more likely to thereafter see Lydia before they stumble across the grammar of my identity.

Being purple also takes a great deal of energy because we  have to be exceptionally good examples. If someone from the mainstream says or does something hurtful, ridiculous or just plain dumb, it only reflects on them as individuals. If a purple person says or does the same thing it is often misunderstood to mean that all purple people agree with him or her. Sometimes I’m happy to expend extra energy by letting new people I meet know right away that I’m purple and proud of it, by answering questions and correcting stereotypes and reminding everyone I meet that labels were never supposed to be an exhaustive description of any of us. At other times, though, I just want to have a nice meal or read my book or go hiking or do anything other than listen to other people’s ideas of who I am, what I think, and what I do.

Is This Fair?

By not always mentioning my affiliations and identities upfront, am I perpetuating the very myths I want to break? How will other people shed their  ignorance if they don’t meet ordinary people who don’t fit the stereotypes of whatever group it is that they don’t understand?

On the other hand, how is it ok to expect one person to carry the weight of an entire group? Asking that seems to perpetuate the idea that, for lack of a better term, there are typical people and then there’s everyone else and that the rest of us must not hesitate to answer even the most repetitive, inane questions and should expect to hear “but you’re not like the rest of them! You’re different!” when someone says something offensive.

There’s also the issue of discrimination. Some people are wonderful when they learn more about my identities. They understand…or maybe they don’t quite understand yet, but they love and support me and ask questions instead of making assumptions about whatever it is that confuses them.

Others don’t understand and don’t want to listen. At this point I only give as much information as can be digested at the moment. When they absorb one fact, I’ll give them another. If they reject it our relationship will probably continue to be much more superficial than my relationships with those who do understand. The door between us remains ajar, though, and I never truly know when they may choose to walk through it after all!

The Bottom Line

People earnthe right to certain aspects of our lives. The breadcrumbs are out there; if asked I won’t lie (although I may change the topic if too many labels or assumptions crowd out the conversation). I simply don’t see the benefit in revealing such personal matters to anyone who genuinely doesn’t want to listen.

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October 18, 2010 · 9:00 am

How to Avoid Guided Imagery

In the 6th grade one of my teachers decided to exercise our imaginations through guided imagery. With eyes closed and heads bowed on our desks, she asked us to imagine ourselves on a lightly scripted adventure that she read aloud to the class.  Sadly, I no longer remember all of the images with which she asked us to pretend we were interacting. There was a door, a being or guide of some sort, a message and a waterfall (or maybe that aspect was left up to our imaginations and I can only remember choosing the waterfall?)

One of the benefits of being a preacher’s kid, I thought, was that I knew how to avoid the the pitfalls of guided imagery. Earlier that year I had read a Christian adventure novel about demonic possession. One of the characters in the book, a young child, was asked to meet a special friend in his (or her?) imagination at school. Because this was a Christian novel, of course, the special friend turned out to be a demon and while I was fairly certain that my teacher wasn’t trying to incite a mass possession one could never be too careful. 😉

I decided, then, to only pretend as though the images flickering in my mind were being guided into any particular thought. Her voice carried us into a story; I followed as far as I dared, pulling back and peeking around the room every so often to see what, if anything, might be staring back at me. When the exercise ended I dutifully wrote and handed in a piece of dreck, careful not to believe a word of it or even to think about what I was writing any more than necessary.

For the rest of that school year I kept this incident in the back of my mind, watching and waiting for the teacher to bring up this exercise once again or to ask us to consult with our imaginary guide on other issues. She never did and I moved on to junior high the next year, quietly relieved, never to see or speak to her again.

After a time I realized that there weren’t any demons to worry about that damp, cold afternoon, that she was honestly just trying to stimulate our imaginations and that by making up a story I had actually fulfilled the criteria in her lesson plan beautifully.

As as adult I am grateful for this early infusion of skepticism, for getting into the habit of not automatically doing or thinking what everyone else is doing or thinking simply because an authority figures says it is a good thing to do. Sometimes, yes, there’s a good reason why everyone else is doing something a certain way. Not everything in life needs to be re-invented but that doesn’t mean I will stop considering the whats, whys, hows, and what ifs along the way!

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October 16, 2010 · 9:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: October 16, 2010

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, charts, novellas, videos and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Female Characters Flowchart. I wonder how this chart would look if there were more women writers working behind the scenes in the entertainment industry?

Germ Theory Denialism. Are vaccines always a good thing? I’d argue no. The HPV vaccine, for example, has yet to be shown to be safe or effective over the long term. Denying germ theory, though, requires a level of distrust in modern medicine that I cannot muster. Do we really want to go back to believing that bad air is a good explanation for the spread of disease? :O

Lucy Hardin’s Missing Period. When I was a kid I seriously loved the Choose Your Own Adventure books. This online novella is an adult version of that series. In it you learn about the life of Lucy Hardin and periodically make decisions at key points in the story. There are hundreds of different variations on this story that can be created based upon what you think Lucy should decide about even mundane choices. A word of warning for those who are very sensitive about these matters: some of the story lines lead to Lucy experiencing a miscarriage or abortion. In others, she has a baby. Nothing about her life is set in stone.

This is so true:

Why I Will Always Be Agnostic. The only thing more intriguing than talking about (dis)belief is translating the variety of our beliefs into a scale.

What have you been reading?

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October 14, 2010 · 9:00 am

Religious Aspects of Positive Thinking

I recently finished Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America. Her premise: the US (and Canada, too, I’d argue) pushes everyone to maintain unbridled optimism about anything and everything that may come their way. Even cancer. The problem is that thinking positive thoughts doesn’t change the outcome of cancer treatment or of anything else investigated in this book.

Religion and positive thinking are both guilty at times of giving our thoughts far too much power. As I said earlier, the problem with positive thinking is not optimism, it’s expectations. There’s nothing wrong with looking on the bright side or expecting that everything will eventually work itself out for the greater good. There is a big problem, though, with the magical thinking that often accompanies persistent optimism. Thoughts cannot be weighed or measured. They cannot bring down the wrath of the gods if  the wrong idea flits through your head. Certain thoughts can be harmful if they lead you to do or say something hurtful (or if they’re a symptom of mental illness and you’re not able to shake off  the burdensome ones.)

It is true that positive thinking is not a religion in the sense that it worships a god or gods. But it does have a mystical quality to it all: follow these steps, say and do these things, believe in this idea (and never that one), and all of your problems will melt away. If your problems don’t go away, if you doubt, if this system doesn’t work for you for any reason,  it’s because you were never a true believer.

There is no middle ground here. No fine print. It’s one size fits all in a world with an infinite number of sizes and shapes. Imagine a board with a series of holes lined up in neat rows from top to bottom. Each hole is just large enough for a small rubber ball to fit through it. It isn’t big enough to pass wooden building block through it, even though some of the other people in the room thinks that everything in the room – the building blocks, the potted plant in the corner, the windows, the desks, the chairs – should be able to fit through that hole if one tries hard enough and cultivates the correct attitude and thoughts.

This isn’t the way life works in the world that I live in. I understand that these types of black-and-white absolutist statements are a source of comfort and stability for many of the people who subscribe to various religious beliefs and I’m happy for those for whom these ideas genuinely work. It doesn’t mean that I’m going to start chopping up the chairs, shattering the glass in the windows or digging the plants out of the soil so that they can fit through the holes in the board in my imaginary room, though.

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October 11, 2010 · 9:00 am

Cultivating Gratitude

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. – Aldous Huxley

“It’s all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it’s not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?” – Anne Shirley

Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Canadians!

Celebrating this holiday in October was a bit of an adjustment for me when I first moved up here. Growing up in the US I had always just assumed that everyone observed it at the end of November with us and so at first it was sort of strange to have Thanksgiving a few weeks before Halloween.

Traditionally this has been a time to reflect on everything in life for which we are grateful. I loved being with my maternal grandparents at Thanksgiving as a child and young adult. Not only was the table laden with all sorts of good things to eat, my grandfather was always almost painfully grateful to be surrounded by happy, healthy family members each year. He grew up in rural Ohio during the Great Depression and World War II. As a young boy he was in an awful accident when a wagon he was riding in collided with a train. Many of the other children on that hay ride died that day. One family buried all four of their children.

I don’t think we will ever truly know what deep impressions those experiences left in him, any more than I could step into your shoes or you could try on someone else’s life experiences for a time.

It makes me wonder how we can be grateful for what we cannot imagine happening. I’ve always had a roof over my head, a loving family, a warm place to sleep, a belly full of food, and medical care when ill. Intellectually I know that a day could come when I don’t have access to some or all of these things but it’s hard to imagine a life without any of it.

Gratitude seems to me to be a process of realizing that not everyone has these things and that we could easily be one of those people if it hasn’t happened already. It isn’t an easy task and definitely cannot take the place of actual life experiences, but it does stretch one’s mind and help us (or at least me!) not to slump into assuming everything good in life will always be there.

Once again I will end this post with a few questions. What are you taking for granted today? For what are you grateful?

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October 9, 2010 · 9:00 am

Suggestion Saturday: October 9, 2010

Here is this week’s list of blog posts, charts, web series and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Salt Shaker Hidden Safe. How to hide small valuables in plain sight. I wonder what other everyday items could be used as miniature safes?

Chart on Healthy Communities. The blogger who posted this chart was mostly focused on religious communities. It applies to all sorts of communities, though: workplaces, school, civic organizations, etc. In my experience the tone of a group can be changed for the worse by as few as one or two people. Improving it generally requires that more people actively work at it.

Masked Avengers Are Real. Or at least they are in Wisconsin. The world would be a better place if every neighbourhood had a few superheroes walking around at night!

Vag Magazine. Check out these teasers from a new comedic web series about a group of third-wave feminists who run a magazine. It was as funny to watch as it was to imagine what they will satirize next! Despite the title this is a work-safe link.

Citizens or Neighbors? On a more serious note Julie Clawson recently shared an excellent blog post about the different between being a good citizen and being a good neighbor (or neighbour here in Canada. 😉 )

Allowing the laws of the land to stand in the way of love is not what it means to live out what Jesus was encouraging in that parable. Standing by and watching a house burn down and pets be burned alive because of a $75 fee is not being a good neighbor. Nor is letting someone die because they aren’t rich enough to afford insurance. From a certain political perspective it can be justified as being a good citizen, but that is not even close to being the same thing.

What have you been reading?

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October 7, 2010 · 9:00 am

The Church Intent of Nuit Blanche

My favourite Nuit Blanche exhibit this year – and quite possibly my favourite exhibit of all time from this event – was John Notten‘s Church Intent, a juxtaposition of Christian symbols and camping gear. Click here for a computer generated walkthrough of the exhibit. It doesn’t show all of the smaller works inside of the tent, but it does give a good feel for what it was like to walk through this exhibit.

Normally I weave together a monologue on whatever it is that has piqued my interest at the moment. For many subjects this works well. Art is better understood in conversation though, so this week I will instead be asking questions. Feel free to answer any or all of them (or ignore them entirely if you’ve thought of better things to discuss here!)

What is your favourite work of art? Why did it first capture your attention?

To what extent are our most deeply held beliefs, religious or otherwise, influenced by the culture(s) we live in? How can we puzzle out where one ends and the other begins?

Theists, how have you experienced God in everyday life? Is there a connection between your interests or hobbies and your religious beliefs?

Non-theists (or Agnostics), what, if anything, gives you a sense of wonder about the world?

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